Emily Dickinson/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby. Moby sits on a ledge of a treehouse and types on a typewriter. Tim looks out of a window at him. TIM: Whatcha doing? Moby pulls a sheet of paper from the typewriter. He gives it to Tim. MOBY: Beep. TIM: "A ladybug whose red and black, wings would make a perfect snack for one who has an empty pantry, I'm talking 'bout the praying manty." It's, um, nice. MOBY: Beep. Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, We're reading Emily Dickinson in school, but her poems are a little weird. Can you help me make sense of them? Thanks, Becca. An image shows Emily Dickinson in a room. The text reads: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). TIM: Emily Dickinson's poetry can be mysterious, almost like a riddle. Her lines and verses are short, with a natural style that's almost chatty. These qualities give her one of the most distinctive voices in American poetry. MOBY: Beep. TIM: The major poets of her day wrote epics, long pieces that tell a story. While these guys looked outward, writing about history and culture, Dickinson wrote lyrics, poems about the inner life of thoughts and feelings. An animation shows a man on stage reading from a long sheet of paper. The screen splits to show Dickinson writing a poem at her desk. A thought bubble shows images of death, love, and nature. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, and that's not the only area where she went her own way. TIM: Women in those days were strongly encouraged to get married, and raise families. And though she had offers, Dickinson never accepted them. Instead, she focused on her work, composing nearly two-thousand poems in just a few decades. An animation shows a man on his knee proposing to Dickinson as she's writing at her desk. She rejects the proposal and continues to write her poetry. Moby reads from a book titled "Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson." TIM: On the surface, her poems are about everyday subjects: a dream she had, something she saw in the garden, an emotion she felt. But once you dig a little, there's a world of meaning waiting in those lines. An animation shows the pages turning in the book of Dickinson's poems. Some of the titles are "A Diamond on the Hand," "A Charm invests a face," and "A Clock stopped." An illustration under “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” shows the frog mentioned in the poem and the admiring bog. MOBY: Beep. Moby gives the book to Tim. TIM: Okay listen to this one. An image shows the first verse of a poem titled "A Bird came down the Walk." Tim begins to read it. TIM: "A Bird came down the Walk, He did not" MOBY: Beep. TIM: Oh, reading poems aloud can help you understand them, plus you'll hear all the sounds and rhythms. In poetry, those things are just as important as the meaning. As Tim reads the poem, the text appears and animations illustrate what is happening. TIM: "A Bird came down the Walk, He did not know I saw, He bit an Angleworm in halves, And ate the fellow, raw, "And then he drank a Dew/From a convenient Grass, And then hopped sideways to the Wall, To let a Beetle pass" MOBY: Beep. TIM: This poem's meter, or rhythm, is really strong: duh-DUM, duh-DUM, duh-DUM. That's called iambic meter, and here it sounds kind of like a bird hopping. An animation shows a bird hopping to illustrate the poem's meter. TIM: Or maybe it's his nervous heartbeat. An animation shows the bird in black with its red heart beating to the poem's meter. As Tim reads the poem, the text appears and an animation illustrates what is happening. TIM: "He glanced with rapid eyes, That hurried all around, They looked like frightened Beads, I thought, He stirred his Velvet Head." MOBY: Beep. A bird lands on the windowsill next to Tim and Moby. Moby looks nervous and the bird's eyes look menacing. Scary music plays briefly. TIM: No, there's nothing cute about this bird. He's a killer who devours a worm then washes it down with a drink. And check out that image, "eyes like frightened beads." That's a simile, a poetic comparison that uses like or as. It's also a personification, giving human qualities to an object. Beads aren't something you'd normally think of as frightened, but you can totally imagine those creepy little eyes. Moby jumps in Tim’s lap and holds onto him. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Ugh, ugh. Let's continue, shall we? As Tim reads the poem, the text appears and an animation illustrates what is happening. TIM: "Like one in danger, Cautious, I offered him a Crumb, And he unrolled his feathers, And rowed him softer home." MOBY: Beep. An animation shows Emily Dickinson watching the bird. Then the bird flies away. TIM: Yeah, it's not clear who feels more in danger: the speaker or the bird. But the tension is broken when it escapes into the sky. Notice how this stanza ends. An image shows the stanza from the poem. TIM: He "rode him softer home." Softer than what? Moby shrugs. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Dickinson is setting us up to expect another simile. And she spends the entire last stanza making it. TIM: "Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless as they swim." As Tim reads, an image shows the last stanza. Animated illustrations appear showing a sun, butterflies, and the bird. Peaceful music plays in the background. Moby shrugs his shoulders. TIM: Whoa. We can spend an hour unpacking that. MOBY: Beep. A side by side animation shows a bird flying and Moby rowing a boat. TIM: We start with a straight-up comparison. Flying is like rowing in a silvery sea, only softer. Then, it's almost like the speaker gets carried away with the whole water idea. The sky transforms into a river, or pond, with butterflies diving into it. The edges of this pond are made of time itself. "Banks of Noon," it's like a dream image, it doesn't quite make sense but it's so vivid. An animation shows the bird flying from a plain yellow sky into a vivid rainbow, filled with butterflies and insects. The lines "Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless as they swim" appear. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Those last two lines are a metaphor, a more direct comparison than a simile. Flying isn't like swimming, it is swimming through time, or existence. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Good ear. An animation shows the bird flying as the poem's last stanza scrolls above it. TIM: Once the bird's off the ground, the meter smooths out. It's still iambic, but it flows more like conversation, or like water. An image shows Moby pointing to two stanzas of the poem. The last words of the second and fourth lines of each stanza: "Crumb," "home," "seam,"" and "swim," are emphasized in red. MOBY: Beep. TIM: No, Dickinson knew that "Crumb" and "home" aren't perfect rhymes. That's an example of slant rhyme, one of her favorite devices. An image shows Dickinson sitting at her desk writing, with examples of slant rhymes above her: grave, bathe, wraith, blaze, love, grieve, give, strive. TIM: With slant rhyme, words only have to share similar sounds. It let Dickinson experiment with language. And it calls our attention to her choices. She wants us to notice those words. So they might hold clues to what's going on with this poem. MOBY: Beep. A split animation shows a bird hopping on top. Below, a child ages from a boy, to a man, to an old man, and then dies. TIM: I think it might be about a person's spiritual journey. His time on earth is filled with suffering and fear. The animation shows the bird flying off, followed by the lines: "And he unrolled his feathers, And rowed him softer home." TIM: When he takes off, maybe that's about dying. The animation shows a butterfly rising from the dead man's body. It flies up into the vividly-colored ocean. The text reads, "And he unrolled his feathers, And rowed him softer home." The last stanza of the poem follows. TIM: He leaves the pain of life behind as he travels to his spiritual home. Notice how the bird is absent from the last stanza? He's been replaced by a butterfly, a clue that some change has taken place. And the language is all about stuff that leaves no trace, an oar that makes no crease in the water, and a dive that makes no splash. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, it's like she leaves us with a big mystery: What happens when we die? Those kinds of questions run through her work. Maybe writing poetry was her way of getting closer to an answer. MOBY: Beep. An animation shows Emily Dickinson sitting at a desk in darkness. It lightens up to reveal a drab, gray room. TIM: It's true. She spent most of her adulthood alone. She was a recluse, rarely leaving her simple bedroom in Amherst, Massachusetts. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Uh, were you listening to that poem? I highly doubt she ever got bored. The animation shows Dickinson’s room filled with color, with green print wallpaper, pink curtains, and lots of sunlight. TIM: She used that space to let her imagination run free. Many of her poems are based on things she saw in her family's garden. An animation shows Emily Dickinson planting in her garden. MOBY: Beep. TIM: She published just a handful of poems in local papers. We're really lucky to have the rest of them. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Before she died, Emily made her sister promise to burn her letters. So, in 1886 that's just what Lavinia Dickinson did. An animation shows Emily Dickinson and her sister, Lavinia, holding hands in front of a fireplace. Lavinia burns Emily's letters in the fireplace. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, she had to keep her word. But Lavinia also found a locked chest in her sister's room. Inside, were forty handmade booklets filled with poetry. An animation shows Lavinia finding Emily's poetry in a chest. TIM: Lavinia became obsessed with publishing them. The first volume came out four years later and was an instant success. An animation shows hands grabbing copies of the book, "Poems by Emily Dickinson, 1890." The books disappear quickly. MOBY: Beep. TIM: It went through eleven printings and critics loved it. She was immediately recognized as a major American poet. An animation shows a woman reading the book on a park bench in Emily Dickinson's time, and then a woman reading the book in contemporary times. TIM: And her voice feels just as fresh today as it did back in 1890. Moby holds a box of his poems. MOBY: Beep. TIM: You what? MOBY: Beep. TIM: Oh, ok. I could also burn them right now. Are you sure you don't want me to burn them now? Moby takes his box of poems away from Tim as he walks away from the treehouse, frowning. TIM: I just meant that you'll probably outlive me! Category:BrainPOP Transcripts